July 4th we attended the "MINI-SPRINT" Bartholomew County 4H fair race. We had a great time although a little bad luck entered into the equation also. The track was a just little dry but smooth as HE double L. Racers call this type of track a drivers race track, and it was sure that.

My "Dark Horse" was AJ Felker. I was what would be called his first race car owner and sponsor. We raced 600cc upright Mini-Sprints together back in the 90's and did pretty good. AJ moved up to racing Full Midgets finishing second in points in the old NAMARS series by 1 point.

AJ found a lovely bride and got married about 12 or 13 years ago and moved out of driving into the role of chassis builder and car owner. When I say chassis builder I am referring to the guy that starts out with bundle of straight 4130 tubing and cuts, bends and welds them together to make a race car and not a person that buys and re-sells another person's chassis. With his driving skills and knowledge of how a race car works he builds one heck of a midget or Mini-Sprint race car. The biggest problem is AJ is an artist and a perfectionist, to get your hands on an FSC chassis you have to be awfully lucky or just hound him to death. I have always chosen the later method. Although rather heavy by Mini-Sprint Standards I think 990 pounds last night when we race we always seem to race up front. It is kinda of funny but we never seem to be on the front row when the feature rolls around but manage to get into contention somehow. It could be my super built cheater ZX-10R motors right off the pallet, it could be Doug's ability to drive a race car and set it up, or perhaps AJ's chassis or a combination of all the above.

Now---How did AJ come to be my Dark Horse? A guy in northern Illinois was fortunate to find a guy here in Indiana that had purchased an FSC chassis and decided Mini-Sprint racing was just not for him. He takes it out the first night racing with full midgets up there and proceeds to win his main event. After that it proceeds to go down hill the old GSXR 1000 wouldn't get out of its own way. After several weeks of pulling his hair out he finally decides to trailer it 500 miles to see if AJ can get it running for him, that was Wednesday of this week. Well AJ did get it running and to make sure it was race ready I talked AJ into a shake down race at Columbus. The guy wanted it ready for some big Memorial race they were having up in Illinois.

This was supposed to be just a shakedown race and the guy did not want to change gears because he was leaving here and going straight to the Big Show in Illinois. This was the first time that AJ has driven a race car in I guess in 10+ years. The car was about two teeth too low on the rear sprocket, and all AJ was supposed to do was check the car out and he admitted to me outrun a few particular racers and go home.

He jumped out to a commanding lead in his heat race and was walking away from the competition. Then all of a sudden stopped between turns one and two. I thought Heck he done went and blew this guys motor up. I wasn't so lucky. when we got back to the trailer there was AJ wanting help and to borrow a fuel pump from us. We dropped everything we were supposed to be doing and went over to help AJ.

We got the new fuel pump duck taped on just in time for AJ start in the back of the "B" main. Talk about a race in the matter of I think 12 laps AJ came from the outside tail of the "B" to win the darned thing.

This put him in number 19 spot for the "A" main. I think we started outside 3rd row our usual starting spot and worked our way up to third chasing down Collin Ambrose. Remember I said we dropped everything to go and help AJ, that included putting fuel in our fuel tank. Heck we had to take gas out of our generator so AJ would have enough fuel to race on. A long yellow came out and while running third we ran out of fuel. That was probably a good thing. AJ caused a little excitement in the "B" cutting and dicing his way up to the front offending a few people and racing aggressively. While Doug and AJ are best of off the race track put them in a race together and "fur flies" neither one of them giving an inch, while making great action for the fans it gives this old man white hairs.

AJ started 19th position and worked his way up to the 3rd the position we were holding until the fuel thing took us out. With the 1st place car being DQ'd for being 5 pounds light that put AJ second.

AJ told me that he really enjoyed his racing adventure, and that is one the biggest smile I have seen on his face in years. I'm not for sure but I think we might have him hooked again and I can't think of nobody I would rather this happen to as he and his dad did the same thing to me many years ago.

What did AJ observe.

1. On the right tracks Mini-Sprints are every bit as competitive as a full midget.

2. Wings suck>>>>He has no desire to race with a wing on again, he said our cars don't have enough horsepower to handle a wing. Yes the wing does make us faster, yes the wing does have a safety or crush factor built into it, (ask Andy Bradley?) but the wings take most of the competition out of the racing, giving the advantage to the big horsepower cars.

3. He would consider building a few more race cars if approached, he is not the type of guy that blows his own horn wanting his actions and results to speak for them selves. I try to do the horn honking for him.

4. What are we going to do? I guess since the Mini-Sprint name is dying off and the organizations are all stuck on "lightning" we are probably going to move on up to Montpelier and try racing Midgets with a new FSC chassis, Dad's Motor combo, that is if they don't run us off.

Honest Dad himself

PS. You guys need to loose that weight "fetish" thing you have! We crossed the scale at close to 1000 pounds last night and ran pretty good. Make your car 10 pounds heavy maybe even 15 without any fuel in it at all. Nobody out there is a good enough driver to have 3 pounds affect the race outcome. The weight thing is all in your mind.

One other thing if you come up low on weight ask to be weighed directly off of the pads that are setting directly on the ground, those scale ramps have been known to spring in the middle making the scales read low.

Dad,
Glad to finally meet you in person last night. This is one of your better posts, in my opinion; everything you said about the evening's festivities is spot-on. To "dry" and "smooth" I'd add to the description "flat" - certainly a ton flatter than Montpelier and Gas City, the first two stops in what seems to be turning into my "Hello Tour", and possibly flatter than a Dark Ages map of the Known World. Personally, I struggled a little to find grip, but felt like I was learning every lap.
I wondered why Doug pulled off so suddenly in the Main, but understand how things like that can happen in the heat of the moment. A.J.'s drive was near-epic and I echo his sentiments that Mini Sprints put on a much better show with the wings off, and that's not biased by my personal preference.
Back to my own experience, I had a great time running with you guys, and hit a couple of milestones, that being my first experience qualifying, and (barely) avoiding getting lapped in both of my events. I had such a good time that I was seriously considering coming down to North Vernon next Saturday, but a morning inspection of the hot rod revealed that my close encounter with Jack Shipman in the heat tore the nerf spuds out of the right side, so it's gonna need to be stripped down and trailered over to Leader's Edge for a little R&R. Jack was very gracious about the incident, thinking that he had me cleared, and even went so far as to offer me his ride if I couldn't answer the bell. Racers. What a great bunch of people.

Jim,

Sorry to hear that you will not be attending next Saturdays race. I second everything you said about all the drivers being such a great group of people. Each week I see everyone pitching in to help each other. Certainly a first class group of racers.

Hopefully we can look forward to seeing you come back to race with us in the near future.

Dad's write up could not have been written any better. It was just an awesome night of racing and hopefully we can keep things going for next weekend.

Jim,you don't need to strip it to replace the nerf sockets, that ought not take more than a couple hours, and you can still make Twin Cities. I have welded them back on at the track! Bob

Jim

We would love to have you down at Twin city next weekend and bring some more of them chain gang racers with you.. Get your self a can of DA Speed Sport Canary Yellow from home depot, give me a call and arrange to drive down here some evening after work to Charlestown In.and I can get AJ to weld a spud back on and maybe even de-kink your bar a little. I can guarantee if you are a racer a tour of his shop will amaze you. I could probably help you figure a gear for your race car also. Twin city is a different animal than Columbus and Montpelier. It is big fast banked and wide.

You were right about flat as a Pre Colombian Map it has always been that way and we did actually have just a few racers fall off the edge of the track Saturday night. That is the fun part about a touring group it keeps everybody on their toes trying to figure out the next week race track.

I would also like to apologize to Nathan. Nathan who actually finished 3rd making AJ 4th.. And each moved up 1 spot because of a couple pound mistake made by Jim Gardner.

Honest Dad himself

Robert,
Perhaps "stripped" was a little too strong a word; I don't mean I'm taking it down to the bare frame, but I'll need to clear a few things out of the way to get to the tears in the frame rails, like the side panels (of course), the seat and a couple of fuel lines that would be perilously close to the heat.
Bill, thanks for the offer but it will save me a ton of time to take it the Baue's shop, which is less than ten miles from home.
Incidentally, I know I wasn't the center of everyone's attention in the "B" but in the last 3 or 4 laps I thought I had a high-speed miss from mid-straightaway on, but I could've been hitting the rev limiter; that's something I haven't experienced from inside the cockpit before, and I was harder on the throttle for longer than I'd been previously. Did anybody happen to notice?

Plenty of people we on the limiter all night. I didn't hear any miss from any cars in the b.

I know its off topic but is the side bars you run chrome moly? I have been building mine out of regular old cheap mild steel or I have even used electro wild tubing. Stainless steel works good too. They don't take a hit like the only does but you don't get any frame damage with the softer easy to bnd bars.
Nick Landon

I never use moly, either .065 aluminium, either 6061, or conduit, or the buffed stainless, cheap, not so, the aluminium is my first choice, 2 different mfg, 2 different od's, I use the 7/8" od, runs about a buck a foot, doesn't tear sockets off, still plenty safe. Bob

Jim

Best I can remember you are running Hilborne injection and probably Dyna ign box on your car. Do you know what the rev limit is set to? What gear ratio were you running? We can take that info and do a little math and see if you were too far off.

Sounds like the driver was just getting in more seat time and improving lap by lap.

Honest Dad himself